The Lobotomist

(Walter Freeman)

Summary: Walter Freeman treated mentally ill people with his new form of lobotomy, where he took an ice pick and put it into a patients brain through there eye cavity. This changed the patients personality and seemed to cure them


Is Walter Freeman a good doctor or a "mad man"?
         I think that Walter Freeman is a mix of both because his practices and procedures were primitive and different. He's a good doctor because he actually wanted to help the mentally ill and he somewhat "cured" the patients, but when he changed their personality to become more submissive and subdued, they lost memories and they forgot how to do simple everyday things like eating or using the bathroom. I think that he is both a good doctor and a mad man because he made a great discovery in the mentally ill and the brain, but he became too powerful in the community and he got to give lobotomies to anyone and everyone who he thought needed it without consulting nurses or the patients friends or family or getting any permission from the patient. People just thought he was amazing because he changed these mentally ill people and just let him do his thing. Also his lobotomies were quick, easy, and inexpensive so he was a good doctor for finding an effective procedure like that, even though he was a madman for the ways he did the operations.



Thoughts:

• Took suicidal tired patients and treated them with a trans orbital lobotomy and changed their personalities
• Freeman looked gentle and had a cheery office full of windows
• He gave hope to people in mental hospitals because he could change how they thought
• freeman was distraught about mental hospitals and he wanted to try and help them he wanted to solve mental problems quickly
• he tried to treat the symptoms but not all were treatable
• people were suffering massive severe depression
• experimented with shock therapies - would become more subdued and quieter
• not a cure for disease but reducing some symptoms
• thought he was born to medical greatness
• freeman spent a long time in the morgue and autopsies of the brain
• after operations the patients relapsed so they would have to do more operations
• after operating on 12 patients he decided that lobotomy is a success
• after lobotomy people went back to a childlike behavior they would have to re teach them simple tasks like eating and going to the bathroom, some over ate PATIENTS WERE NOT THE SAME PERSON AFTER THE OPERATION
• he said the lobotomy was a new cure to mental illness
• freeman wanted to help people (and his reputation)
• he showed a lot of people how to preform a lobotomy
• freeman's lobotomy is quick, inexpensive, and doesn't require a lot of experience
• people called him the "Henry ford" of lobotomy